Ya Bezzer!

When the draw was made I was confident about this match but with a pretty tepid defeat at home to Accies, the winter break and the 'build up' to the match concerning Robinson there is an accumulation of factors that might unsettle us. We should still win, Dundee's form has been far from stellar a division below us, I just hope this doesn't turn out to be a damp squib. The second half of the season is almost like a new season in itself these days so you are never sure what you are going to get.

Turnbull can't really be expected to do much for us this season given his injury lay off and lack of fitness and in my opinion Maguire should be ahead of Semple or Cornelius if there is a midfield spot in the team. If we are bringing someone in we need a midfielder that is comfortable on the ball, has a bit of vision and grafts. Tough ask but its what is needed. We could also do with a target man style forward because Scott is better coming in from wide areas and Long can't hold the ball up. The right back area is a position that needs improve but perhaps isn't as pressing as the other areas mentioned right at this moment.

Long provided the bit of magic but even his game was flawed as he is incapable of holding the ball up. However since everyone else was in the same boat scoring the goal gets him the MotM.

The problem with Campbell is he tries too hard. When we aren't playing well he tries to cover for the deficiencies of his team mates and spoils his own game. Just look to last season where the first half of the season he looked out of sorts then improved massively when he had better players around him with the introduction Gorrin and Turnbull. Right now the guys Campbell is playing along side in midfield aren't of the standard they should be. Sure we have points on the board, sure we are sitting high in the table but I'm telling you right now our central midfield options aren't as good as our league placing would suggest. If we don't fix it a natural equilibrium will occur and we will find ourselves losing more matches like yesterday. Campbell needs better players around him. If we can provide them it will be better for Campbell and for the team.

To be fair to Robinson he can only make three subs and about 8 players needed hauled off today. I think he got it wrong changing the formation but he was put in a bad position but an appalling second display by just about the whole team. Managers can pull things out the bag sometimes but I think today the level of performance across the team put that beyond much hope.

I think if you are being completely honest our results have been better than our performances recently so I'm not that surprised about what happened but having said that it was our poorest performance in a long while. Started well and scored a good goal but almost immediately after scoring the goal we went into first gear, became withdrawn, got sluggish and sloppy. Even then Accies should have still opened the scoring in the first couple of minutes but they too were poor in the first half so we kind of got away with it. Second half was atrocious and Accies gave us a hosing. 7 or 8 players just didn't look interested and the truth is 1-2 defeat made us look better than we were, Accies should have scored more. Could easily have been 1-4 or 1-5. Gillespie has made a great save, Moyo has headed inches wide and there was plenty more chances beside those for Accies. If we'd won today we would have gone into the Scottish Cup match with a lot of confidence, I think today's performance has got to put a little bit of doubt in there now because we were really so poor. I've been saying for a while that our central midfield area is a concern and today didn't change that.

Hooray! We agree!

I'm down the other end of the pitch so I'll take your word on that. Even if he did I thought he was one of our better players and has done fairly well since he came into the team.

He's a good player but he's never a £7m player. Turnbull was a better player last year than Kent.

Don't think we are really grasping what I'm saying. I'm saying when we come up against technically better players we really struggle. We've beaten teams higher up the league table than Hibs but Hibs have a standard of player that's technically better than ours. If you think we keep possession and passed the ball well today, fine. When we win, people white wash over our deficiencies. When we lose players are accused of bottling or not showing up. What I'm trying to highlight is that our performance today was actually fairly consistent with how we played against St Johnstone, St Mirren and Hearts.

Fair enough. But do you think Hearts are there as a measure of quality? I'm thinking more about the four teams in the league that have any kind of quality about them - Celtic, Rangers, Aberdeen and Hibs.

Has to be one of Mugabe, Gallagher or Campbell. I know Gillespie made a few good saves but I've mention why I wouldn't consider him in the main match thread. Gallagher for me.

The thing is Rangers weren't that special today. I was expecting a lot more from them but all they really did was do the basics better than us in the first half. They went in at half time 1-0 purely because WE kept giving the ball away. The number of corners and set pieces we conceded in the first half was ridiculous and of course when Rangers got their opening goal it was from a corner, when only a minute or so before our goalkeeper had the ball in his hands. I like Gillespie, he's a good goalkeeper and he pulled off some good saves today but his distribution stunk and played a part in our downfall. Second half, despite not improving much, Rangers fell away slightly and looked like we might actually get something out the match. The introduction of Scott improved us a lot. When Rangers killed the game a 2-0 it was probably against the run of the match at that point. I was surprised Morelos wasn't taken off by Gerrard earlier in the match because that red card was coming all day. He should have been booked long before he actually was. After that the match was over and kind of petered out. I keep drawing attention to our current midfield, it's not as bad as it was when we were playing McHugh, Grimshaw (terrible today at right back) and Rose in there but it's a big step down from last season with Turnbull and Gorrin. The recent matches showed you can get away with poor distribution against even poorer teams but against half decent opposition it's a different story. In our last 5 matches against the city clubs we've lost all 5, and are 12-1 down on aggregate. When we come up against the very little quality there is in this league we struggle. We seem to be the best of a poor bunch of provincial clubs. That's not me throwing thunderbolts, just a realistic appraisal of what we are.

Don't know why people are surprised by our passing. It was rotten against St Johnstone, St Mirren and Hearts. Poor distribution from the keeper and an inability to keep the ball has put us under so much avoidable pressure. It led to the goal. Formation needs changed. Campbell and Donnelly look so isolated on the ball. Need to load the midfield. Three forwards are doing nothing right now.

Rangers haven't won in 3 matches so they are going to be under pressure, especially if they don't start well. They can't afford to drop further behind Celtic, especially with the next Old Firm match at Celtic Park. If they were even to draw today they could easily be 7 points behind Celtic at the break. That wouldn't go down well. I think we've got away with a lot due to playing very poor teams over the last few matches and we are going to have to perform at a much higher level to have a chance. We can't afford to only start playing 30 minutes in. Rangers have only failed to score 2 or more in the league 3 times out of 15 this season so we will have to use the ball much better than we have and be right in there from the start. If we give them the opening 30 minutes they will almost certainly score. Rangers will be massive favourites but if you only bet on favourites, like I do, you'll know that's not exactly the fast track to untold wealth. Rangers are much better than us but they have also shown a fragile underside recently, albeit against better teams than us. It's still there though. We have nothing to lose, it's Rangers that have to win. I hope we can transfer the pressure from us to them during the match. Then you never know. The only time we've ditched the 4-3-3 this season has been against Rangers and Celtic so I'd fully expect us to go 5-3-2.

Probably didn't deserve the three points today in all honesty. Fair play to Long for a good finish that has decided the match. Overall though a pretty poor quality match with very few chances created for either team. Don't want to be too critical given our league position but we've had an easy run of fixtures and I'm not convinced at all by our central midfield three. For me it's substantially poorer than last season's and against better quality opponents, such as next week's visitors, I'd be a little concerned. Our ball retention isn't good enough at the moment. We've been a little bit like we were at times under McCall, not playing particularly well but picking up points and wins. On the upside I thought Mugabi had another decent game, Carroll is very consistent and Hylton was excellent in periods but we are going to have to improve a lot against Rangers or it might be a long afternoon.

Similar story to the last few matches, look a bit slack, bit awkward, bit wasteful in possession but when it comes down to it we have more edge in the box. Hylton far and away the best player so far.

But not taking Alex McLeish into account.

Naismith is the key for Hearts. He went off injured midweek so it would be no bad thing if he didn't play today.

Today scoring the first goal is going to be crucial. If we get the first I think the match will be there for the taking. Hearts are in existential crisis and on a pair with St Mirren and St Johnstone in terms of quality. We aren't likely to face a poorer Hearts team than this one so we really need to be looking for full points from this.

If he's on 5 grand a week, quite a bit lower than the average wage at Rangers, he'll still earn over a million pounds over four years. To stay at Motherwell would literally be like winning the lottery, then tearing up your ticket so you can keep working at McDonalds. On top of that he's played 14 more games and scored 3 more goals than he had this time last year at Motherwell, ie none, in front of much bigger home crowds (Rotherham 8,000 - 10,000 ave attendance) and at a level that's no worse, and arguably better than he'd be playing most weeks in the Premiership.

Got to be Scott for illuminating the match with something a little bit special.

Heard on the radio that Austen will be the manager at the weekend although who knows for sure. Agree with you on a couple of things. We started really poor again tonight and while we can do that against bottom of the league teams with powder puff attacks we won't get away with it indefinitely. I also rate Scott and think he should be starting. He's a kid learning the game and you have to expect mistakes, decision making is something you get with experience, but what he does do is he always looks to carry the ball forward, has better technical ability than most of the team and is capable of doing that little something special on occasion. We were toiling before he produced an excellent opening goal and that turned the match around. Overall I think the balance of the team is much better when we have Scott wide and play Cole upfront and leave Long on the bench. On the other hand while it looks good now things can change quickly so I think it's a bit premature to think Top 6 is a certainty. We have tougher matches coming up - the Ross County match will be important in that regard.

Much like Saturday we were second best when we scored. Excellent goals by Scott but for me we'd been poor up till then. Agree the midfield has been hopeless. Campbell, Polworth and Donnelly were spectators. Game opened out a bit after the first goal. We'll see how it goes 2nd half.

May as well start with the good bit. Really good goal for the fourth with good set up play from Scott and O'Hara and a really nice finish from Manzinga. Otherwise we were lucky today that we were playing a team that looked like it thinks it's relegated already. At times St Johnstone dominated in terms of possession but never looked like troubling us. Even when they were pinging the ball around there was a whiff of the defeated about them. I said at the time that any team that hadn't scored against us after the extraordinary poor level of our performance in the first 25 minutes was going to lose and so it transpired. The first three goals we scored were down to shocking defending from St Johnstone. I'm certain Tommy Wright will be furious at defending crosses and corners in the way they did. The ugly nature of our goals kind of summed up the match in general. The team deserves some credit for taking it's chances but today underlined that you don't need to be good to win and in this case handsomely.